A few quick tweaks: 'S' cheat now works, game is over when a base goes down (no more after-attacks ) & a real classic: 'Press 'K' to kill everyone'.Archers now cost 1.5 & swordsmen have health 15, but I've not had a chance to test the effects yet.

Won 6 out of 8 and it got a lot more fun, the swordsman can kill another couple of archers/mortars before dying but can still not stand a rifle group.

The archers are great for bombarding the base but if you only build archers you'll end up dying due to swordsmen.

I still managed to "tankrush" twice by building 28 riflemen at once and then build 4 mortars and then build riflemen until the enemy base is destroyed, but that probably has more to do with the AI than with balancing.

Lol! That'll teach you to press random keys! You'll lose if any base but your original one is destroyed. Can't think why no fencers tho... Does the box highlight?

Oh, I'm lose. Oops. Didn't read carefully enough - it didn't look like a game over screen, and click to continue in the same in either case. I was assuming there was a level system and it would go back to the initial screen when I lost.

I can summon fencers now. Not sure why I couldn't earlier. Is there a budget which you can exhaust?

Oh, I'm lose. Oops. Didn't read carefully enough - it didn't look like a game over screen, and click to continue in the same in either case. I was assuming there was a level system and it would go back to the initial screen when I lost.

I can summon fencers now. Not sure why I couldn't earlier. Is there a budget which you can exhaust?

The buttons you're pressing are cheats, not the actual game. If you'll notice, Simon just said that the "S cheat not works," he was referring to the fencer cheat.

1) deploy nothing until the opponents first wave gets to your base, and let your base kill them.2) deploy archers (should be something like 30-40 by this time)3) for the rest of the game deploy soldiers to overtake your archers & act as a meat shield.

You should win in around 2 minutes.

Massed archers do seem to be almost unstoppable because the shower of arrows they create stops almost everything getting into range to attack - including their intended counter - the sword guy.Perhaps their max range should be reduced a little, and their min range increased.

Mortars on the other hand seem decidedly ineffective - they're extremely vulnerable yet their attack doesn't seem to do much to turn the tide of battle.Perhaps an increase to the blast radius of their attack would help.

Yeah, mortars should have their explosion radius and rate of fire increased, and probably damage as well. Their intention I think is to kill giant swaths of riflemen, but they never really manage to do much before someone picks them off.

1) deploy nothing until the opponents first wave gets to your base, and let your base kill them.2) deploy archers (should be something like 30-40 by this time)3) for the rest of the game deploy soldiers to overtake your archers & act as a meat shield.

You should win in around 2 minutes.

Massed archers do seem to be almost unstoppable because the shower of arrows they create stops almost everything getting into range to attack - including their intended counter - the sword guy.

You can only build 20 archers at that time as credits are capped to 30 (if you can make 30-40 please tell me how )

When only making archers I won 5 times out of 6 (the one time I didn't the AI went nuts on swordsmen, went through my archers as a knife through butter

One thing that'd make the archers less all-round would be to have an optimal range for when they hit the best. If someone is really far away they hit it them 33% of the time. Once the enemy gets closer it increases to 50% but the closer someone gets after that the worse it gets, giving something like a 1% chance to hit swordsmen when they're engaged in hand to hand combat.

The buttons you're pressing are cheats, not the actual game. If you'll notice, Simon just said that the "S cheat not works," he was referring to the fencer cheat.

Oooooooh. Wow, the game takes ages just using the mouse. I gave up after half an hour because it was a total stalemate. Both of us had a couple of engineers sitting on our bases, so damage was repaired too quickly.

Mortars are actually quite good if you have some cannon fodder in front of them to draw enemy fire. I don't think the blast radius needs to be improved; what would be nice is a) "leading" a target - that is, assuming that the swordsman running at them will move at constant speed rather than stand still while the shell is in flight; b) hold position if there are enemy units within blast range of their previous shot, assuming that the reload time is faster if they don't move.

Oooooooh. Wow, the game takes ages just using the mouse. I gave up after half an hour because it was a total stalemate. Both of us had a couple of engineers sitting on our bases, so damage was repaired too quickly.

Something that might add a bit more challenge/strategy to the game is if you had two more smaller bases in front of your main base, like two guarded check points further down the map, so the enemy would need to fight and destroy each of the smaller bases before being able to progress to your main base, would also add more use to units like the mortor.

Maybe even drop units at the furthest most base so they don't have to run across the whole map and once a base is destroyed units can't be dropped there anymore.

I think this isn't the case in multiplayer. Even with 1 unit it would be thrilling, because then suddenly the focus lies on timing, and predicting the other guy, which can be hard enough. It's like playing checkers... 1 type of unit, lots of complexity.

That analogy doesn't really fly imho.The difference with checkers is that with one unit type you have full control over strategic decisions for those units. With stickman with only one unit type, you don't really have that much control as it'll merely become a matter of timing; a one button gameplay thing. How much complexity in gameplay can you get out of one button that most of the time doesn't even do anything?

Maybe some ideas for the game:* New unit: Health packs. You can control where the health packs will be dropped, but the enemy can use them too!* Experience and max hitpoints for the stickman: The more they kill, the tougher they become

That analogy doesn't really fly imho.The difference with checkers is that with one unit type you have full control over strategic decisions for those units. With stickman with only one unit type, you don't really have that much control as it'll merely become a matter of timing; a one button gameplay thing. How much complexity in gameplay can you get out of one button that most of the time doesn't even do anything?

Boy have I written some crummy code in my time, but this really is the 'crumb de la crumb'! Spaghetti with fudge sauce. A total lash-up server for stickmen. Why not phone a friend and (ulp!) try it now;

'dumbot' is always there and is the existing AI. 'Real' players should show up in the lobby as they join...It is possible to play several players (with different names) on the same machine, as long as the fps stays at 20 for them all. If the fps goes under 20 the sync is lost and silly things happen (like 2 winners ).

I've made some wild assumptions with this server;1. Fps will be 20 on all machines.2. Latency (client-server-client) never exceeds 1000ms.3. Googleapps don't kick me off for eating bandwidth!

Are these credible? Or might have I goofed?

The cheats still work but aren't multiplayered (so no point in using them) and will probably screw everything up anyway.The soldiers have been tweaked a bit, swordsmen are a bit tougher and mortars fire a bit faster.

Loool! With a friend's help I got it working! Max fun!No combat due to a stupid coding mistake that confused IPs... but when it works it's nice.There's still a bad missing/delayed message problem though - I think I know where to look...It needs some more balancing - the 30 soldier, 2 Mortar, then always 12 Soldier technique seems to beat or stalemate anything...

Ok, a bit of frantic bodging & it should work better now.I've added 'arniebot' who plays the 30+2+12 strategy and is very hard to beat, even though I've shortened the infantry's range by 30%.I think I'm going to have to add some kind anti-infantry unit, though you can use swordsmen to get the enemy to mortar themselves. I also think I need to reduce the wave time from 10 secs down to 6 or 7 secs... A chat facility would be nice too!Has anyone actually managed to have a two-player game yet?

Ok, new version up.It now has a primitive chat system and shouldn't lose random packets any more...Wave time now reduced to 7 seconds which speeds the game up a bit.There's a new unit: Flail - costs 20 but is very resistant to bullets so very good against those mobs of infantry.

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